Miyagi Prefecture is found in the Tohoku (northern) area of Japan and is home to popular YouTuber Chris, aka, Abroad in Japan. Though he resides in Sendai, the largest city in Miyagi, he shows us a food highlight tour of the entire prefecture.

To start off, Chris gives us a valuable tip for traveling in Japan. Instead of renting a car at a normal agency, you can save money by using a second-hand car rental company. This allowed him to travel all over the prefecture comfortably while saving tens or hundreds of dollars per day.

Chris’ town is well known for gyutan which is grilled beef tongue. The restaurant featured in the video served a full gyutan meal, complete with wasabi to be paired with the gyutan and oxtail soup. He describes the meat as oily and chewy, but very good. Despite being the local specialty of Sendai, locals eat it about once per month according to a brief survey by Chris. He agrees that this is about the same frequency for himself that he indulges in the “guilty pleasure.”

Ishinomaki is a port town that was devastated by the tsunami of 2011, but its claim to fame is that it’s the portal to one of Japan’s “Cat Islands,” just a 40-minute boat ride away. The town also pays homage to Shotaro Ishinomori, a Japanese manga artist who dreams that people be surrounded by manga characters in real life. There are twenty statues of characters all around the city.

As far as food goes, Ishinomaki is famous for a unique variation of yakisoba (fried noodles).
The noodles are brown and don’t stick together since they’ve been steamed twice. Chris recommends using yakisoba sauce on the noodles to complete the meal.

Chris headed back to Sendai to enjoy another regional specialty – oysters. The restaurant featured in the video is known for a their fresh oysters and a specialty oyster dish that comes with five different flavors: grilled cheese, chili powder, bacon, garlic butter, and escargot butter.

Zao is a town in southern Miyagi where Japan’s famous fox village is located. There’s a cheese factory nearby that even features cosmetics made from cheese whey. You can find many varieties of cheese here, which is a delight particularly to the foreigners living in Japan who have difficulty procuring the wide selections of cheese that they may be used to back home.

The dairy game is strong in Zao and continues down the road with an establishment that specializes in locally sourced eggs. Chris claims that the beef stew omuraisu was the best rice omelet that he’s ever had with the eggs being uniquely fluffy.

Sendaiko is a ramen restaurant unique to Miyagi. The braised pork ramen boasts a soup stock that is thick and tastes like gravy. Chris explains the difference between the two broth types of assari and kotteri soup stock before revealing that he prefers kotteri style.